“I just saw one of the cappers for the place go out before you went in.”
“Capper?” repeated Kennedy surprised. “Antoinette Moulton a steerer for a gambling joint? What can a rich society woman have to do with a place like that or a man like Schloss?”
Winters smiled sardonically. “Society ladies to-day often get into scrapes of which their husbands know nothing,” he remarked. “You didn’t know before that Antoinette Moulton, like many of her friends in the smart set, was a gambler—and loser—did you?”
Craig shook his head. He had more of human than scientific interest in a case of a woman of her caliber gone wrong.
“But you must have read of the famous Moulton diamonds?”
“Yes,” said Craig, blankly, as if it were all news to him.
“Schloss has them—or at least had them. The jewels she wore at the opera this winter were paste, I understand.”
“Does Moulton play?” he asked.
“I think so—but not here, naturally. In a way, I suppose, it is his fault. They all do it. The example of one drives on another.”
Instantly there flashed over my mind a host of possibilities. Perhaps, after all, Winters had been right. Schloss had taken this way to make sure of the jewels so that she could not redeem them. Suddenly another explanation crowded that out. Had Mrs. Moulton robbed the safe herself, or hired some one else to do it for her, and had that person gone back on her?